KEY POINTS:
Graeme Smith's heroics in Sydney saw himself added to a Boy's Own collection of cricketers who have battled through the pain barrier in test cricket to perform heroic deeds.
Not all of these deeds led to famous victories - see numbers 10, 9, 6, 5, 2 and 1 for example - but they gave their teams hope when there was little beforehand.
There had to be something extraordinary about them, too. There are plenty of examples of batsmen pulling muscles at the crease and battling on with one leg - you could fill a feature with such Gordon Greenidge yarns - but, aside from Steve Waugh's extraordinary effort in 2001, they don't make the grade.
You might ask why Ewen Chatfield is missing, given his heart stopped after he was hit on the head by a Peter Lever bouncer. Well, for the harsh fact that he didn't continue in that same test (it, in fact, ended at that moment) and by the time he returned, the scars were mental rather than actual.
In a similar vein, Mike Gatting deserves a medal for flying back to the West Indies for the test series after a Malcolm Marshall bouncer in a one-dayer left shards from the bones around his nose embedded in the ball but it doesn't qualify. It's a tough game, is cricket.
10. Denis Compton, Manchester, 1948
Sometime Arsenal winger Compton was on just 12 and the total 33-2 when he received one from Ray Lindwall that cannoned into his face. He left the field distressed and possibly concussed but returned, swathed in bandages, with the score at 119-5.
He received a bouncer from Lindwall first ball back which gave the Manc chavs something to spit about but Compton just grinned. When the innings ended, he was not out 145. This was the only test of this series England did not lose, though the delightful Manchester weather prevented them winning it as well.
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9. Martin Crowe, Christchurch, 1986
These were the days when many a class batsman wore just the shell of a helmet without the distracting perspex visors.
Crowe must have regretted that when, on 51, Bruce Reid cut his jaw with a steepler. New Zealand were in some trouble at 117-4, chasing Australia's Allan Border-inspired first innings of 364 and things were little better when he returned with the total at 190-6. When he was last man out, his side had got to within 25 runs of Australia and he had scored 137.
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8. Eddie Paynter, Brisbane, 1933
Acute tonsillitis should have kept Paynter in bed in the third test of the most controversial series ever played but instead he went from hospital bed to the Gabba where, with his side 216-6, he led them to 340 with a brilliant 83.
He ended up flicking a six to win the match in the second innings. There's a word to describe the bravest performance in the Bodyline summer coming from an Englishman - irony.
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7. Steve Waugh, London (The Oval), 2001
The legendary battler scored 157 not out on one leg after injuring his calf in the third test of the Ashes. He missed the fourth, which England won, and was desperate to return for the final test. Australia won but the joy was short-lived for Waugh, who developed a blood clot in that calf on the way home and had to undergo treatment for deep vein thrombosis.
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6. Dean Jones, Chennai, 1986
In his first test in two-and-a-half years, Jones defied heat-stroke and exhaustion to compile 210. Allan Border famously chastised him when he asked to retire hurt, saying he wanted "a tough Australian out there, a Queenslander".
The Victorian Jones stayed: "I had pins and needles all over my body, I couldn't bend to sweep and I was struggling to even get down the pitch as I couldn't move my legs. Then I started to urinate involuntarily." When his eight-and-a-half hour vigil ended, he was rushed to hospital.
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5. Graeme Smith, Sydney, 2009
The South African captain had nothing left to prove. On the back of his runs and Dale Steyn's wickets, the South Africans had strangled the Australians in the first two tests to take a 2-0 lead. But their unwillingness to bow to anybody saw them scrape and claw their way towards safety in the third test on a dodgy last-day wicket.
When Smith came out to bat with a broken hand with a little more than eight overs remaining - he'd only recently had his own blood injected into his injured elbow - you would have sworn he was an Australian, such was the reception he received. He fell an agonising, literally, 10 balls short of safety.
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4. Malcolm Marshall, Leeds, 1984
The late, great Marshall destroyed England in the second innings, taking 7-53, despite breaking his thumb while fielding in the first innings. He came out to bat one-handed, too, helping Larry Gomes through to an unbeaten century that further demoralised the English.
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3. Rick McCosker, Melbourne, 1977
The scoreboard shows RB McCosker c Greig b Old 25 but that doesn't tell a fraction of the story. In the first innings, he had his jaw broken by a Bob Willis bouncer but in their second, he came out to bat at No 10 swathed in bandages and with his jaw wired shut. He shared a 54-run ninth-wicket partnership with Rod Marsh, invaluable given that Australia won the Centenary Test against England by 45 runs.
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2. Bert Sutcliffe, Johannesburg, 1953
On a brutal Ellis Park pitch, Neil Adcock was making the ball rear and spit. Murray Chapple and Geoff Rabone were hit, Matt Poore was bowled off his chest and John R Reid took five blows to the body in short time. Worse, Adcock sent Lawrie Miller to hospital coughing blood and hit Sutcliffe with such a fearful blow behind the ear second ball that he dropped like a sack of spuds and would faint twice more at hospital.
When he returned, fortified by Scotch whisky, he looked like he was wearing a turban and would later admit he never played the short ball so well again. Oh, and he smashed the bowling around for 80 not out, sharing a 33-run stand with Bob Blair for the final wicket.
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1. Bob Blair, Johannesburg, 1953
You couldn't wrap a bandage around where Blair was hurting. Just hours before, he had received the news he had lost his fiancee in the Tangiwai disaster. All the players had started the walk back to the changing sheds when he appeared like an apparition. Sutcliffe met him and they walked arm-in-arm to the wicket, where not a dry eye met them.
